We are accustomed, in this post-Phillip Dick world, to maintain a healthy sense of ambiguity about what is “real” and what is “illusion.” Human experience can be so readily falsified by our increasingly electro-magnetically mediated relationships that what was once pathological paranoia about the authenticity of one’s thoughts, experiences and actions has now become a commonplace understanding that our thoughts are monitored, our impulses manipulated and our experiences doctored by unknown, almost certainly malign forces.
Thus, it seems quaint to read old interpretations of Wallace Stevens’ “The World as Meditation” poem, as they inevitably wrestle with the nonchalance of both the speaker and Penelope that the homecoming of Ulysses she celebrates is almost certainly a figment of her imagination. Today, we are more likely to shrug our tattooed shoulders and say, “whatever floats your boat.” But back then, such doubts led to more existential lines of questioning: How can the mind alone create a satisfactory world? In what way does the real world itself contribute to the authenticity of one’s illusion? Why is Ulysses’ illusory return more real to Penelope than his actual absence?
Interpreters in every decade since the poem was written in 1952 have struggled with its interplay of reality and illusion. Here are some examples:
". . . her [Penelope's] imagination of Ulysses, her constant meditation of reunion with the man she constantly creates in her mind, this power presses back, composes within herself a world of value and order." [Louis L. Martz, "Wallace Stevens: The World as Meditation," Yale Review, XLVII, 5I8 (June, 1958), 5.]
“Desire is satisfied only by knowing the proximate, never the ultimate, satisfaction, like Penelope waiting for a Ulysses and finding satisfaction in the thought rather than the fact of his coming.” [Joseph Riddel, The Clairvoyant Eye: The Poetry and Poetics of Wallace Stevens, LSU Press (1965), p 247]
“… it is no longer a question of some reality which already exists out there in the world, and of which the poet then makes an image … There is only one ever-present existence: consciousness of some reality. Imagination is reality.” [J. Hillis Miller, “Wallace Stevens’ Poetry of Being,” in The Act of the Mind: Essays on the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, ed. Roy Harvey Pearce and J. Hillis Miller (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), pp. 144.]
“… one need not relinquish one reality in order to acknowledge another; that it is, in fact, the co-existence of the two realities that keeps Penelope alive.” [Sharon Cameron, “‘The Sense Against Calamity’: Ideas of a Self in Three Poems by Wallace Stevens.” ELH, vol. 43, no. 4, 1976, p. 591]
“Desire gives imagination the force to supplant exterior reality … Penelope’s imagination metamorphoses Ulysses as she thinks about him, and no original or memory of the original is available in the poem … to realize something one must recreate, internalize it.” [Loren Rusk, “Penelope's Creative Desiring: ‘The World as Meditation,’” The Wallace Stevens Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 1985, pp 20-21.]
“[Penelope is] creating a reality in which she is constantly ready for Ulysses’ return and he is constantly approaching.” [Rebecca Dickens, “The Zen of Stevens,” 1990 Master’s Thesis]
“[In] Stevens’s dramatization of the events of experience, the self in relationship with world and others, … the center of connection … retains a quality of uncertainty, a questionableness, that again and again leaves the event as in an aura of mystery or awe.” [Howard Pearce, “Wallace Stevens’s Poetry of ‘The Strange Unlike,’” in Mystery in its Passions: Literary Exploration. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka Editor. Analecta Husserliana Volume 82 (2004), p. 264]
“ … The relationship between the world that one perceives and the actual outside world, and how this relationship changes in response to desire. Meditation, for Stevens, is a reflective and receptive process by which one reconciles oneself with the world around one.” [Genevieve Frank, “The World as Meditation,” The University Scholar, Volume XVIII Number 2 (Spring 2018), 14]
Hm. Imagination creating (or at least augmenting) reality out of desire. Sounds simple enough. But is that really what the poem is about? Let’s take a closer look.
The “meditation” in the title is not to be confused with Eastern religion-inspired meditation (although it doesn’t exclude it). The more precise connotation is the traditional one: “a written or spoken discourse expressing considered thoughts on a subject.” Thus, the title professes no less than an explanation of life. And, in surprising ways, as we will see, it delivers.
It starts with the following epigraph in French by Romanian composer, violinist, and pianist Georges Enesco (1881-1955), an illustrious, almost-exact contemporary of Stevens: “J’ai passé trop de temps à travailler mon violon, à voyager. Mais l’exercice essentiel du compositeur — la médiatation — rien ne l’a jamais suspendu en moi … Je vis un rêve permanent, qui ne s’arrête ni nuit ni jour.” This translates to “I have spent too much time practicing my violin, traveling. But the essential exercise of the composer – meditation—has never stopped in me … I live in a permanent dream, arrested neither by day nor night.”
Here is the poem:
Is it Ulysses that approaches from the east,
The interminable adventurer? The trees are mended.
That winter is washed away. Someone is moving
On the horizon and lifting himself up above it.
A form of fire approaches the cretonnes of Penelope,
Whose mere savage presence awakens the world in which she dwells.
She has composed, so long, a self with which to welcome him,
Companion to his self for her, which she imagined,
Two in a deep-founded sheltering, friend and dear friend.
The trees had been mended, as an essential exercise
In an inhuman meditation, larger than her own.
No winds like dogs watched over her at night.
She wanted nothing he could not bring her by coming alone.
She wanted no fetchings. His arms would be her necklace
And her belt, the final fortune of their desire.
But was it Ulysses? Or was it only the warmth of the sun
On her pillow? The thought kept beating in her like her heart.
The two kept beating together. It was only day.
It was Ulysses and it was not. Yet they had met,
Friend and dear friend and a planet’s encouragement.
The barbarous strength within her would never fail.
She would talk a little to herself as she combed her hair,
Repeating his name with its patient syllables,
Never forgetting him that kept coming constantly so near.
Ambiguity – the mode for the main character as well as reader – strikes at the outset:
Is it Ulysses that approaches from the east,
The interminable adventurer?
On the surface, this seems a straightforward rendering of a scene from the world's oldest great epic poem the Odyssey, where Penelope, having waited years for her husband Ulysses to return, imagines he might finally be arriving. Hopeful even after years of persistently watching the seas, she is by turns honoring (comparing him to the sun rising in the east) and chiding (regarding his masculine need for adventure “interminable”).
At a level of syntax, however, this interpretation falls apart. It’s not “Ulysses who” approaches, as would connote a human, but “Ulysses that” approaches, which suggests that this vague presence is not even identifiable as a man. Similarly, Ulysses is not “the interminable adventurer,” the east is. The rising of the sun is, indeed, our adventure of dailyness, and it is interminable, more correctly so than would be a person (as opposed to his long journey). Right away, the chimerical figure of Ulysses is dehumanized, more sun than man. So the question of “is he approaching” (what our romantic minds can easily construe) becomes “is it approaching?” (a more mysterious calculus).
The going gets even weirder from here:
The trees are mended.
That winter is washed away.
It’s hard to imagine – even metaphorically – trees being mended, even taking into account the miraculous reappearance of leaves in the spring. And how can the winter be washed away, when there is no snow in Greece?
Trees and washing are important touchstones in the Odyssey, of course, for answering, in fact, the question, “Is it Ulysses?” When Ulysses returns to Penelope he goes disguised as a beggar, so he won’t be recognized by all the suitors sponging off his wife. While he keeps his identity secret from Penelope, her servant Eurycleia recognizes him when washing his feet, because of the scar he received from boar hunting as a boy. Ulysses similarly disguises himself as a stranger when visiting his father Laertes, but, when seeing how disconsolate his father is that the stranger has no news of his son, he decides to reveal his identity by recalling all the various trees he received from Laertes as a boy.
Mending also comes into play in the story, when a loyal sheep herder tells a disguised Ulysses of having seen Ulysses mending his sails – the only such story that he was still alive. So, metaphorically, the ship (made of trees) has been mended with his return, as the winter of his absence has been “washed away” by his being recognized.
But Penelope, as in the original, does not know he has returned. Her perception is only of the things around Ulysses, not the man himself. To her:
Someone is moving
On the horizon and lifting himself up above it.
Though the figure is identified as “someone”, the action is more befitting the sun, or a man ascended inaccessibly high, or a remote God. This lack of relation to the human Ulysses is amplified in the next line, a poetically apt description for the rising of the sun:
A form of fire approaches the cretonnes of Penelope,
Whose mere savage presence awakens the world in which she dwells.
The fire’s “mere savage presence awakens” her world by revealing it. “Cretonnes” is an inappropriate word to be used in this context. It nominally signifies the heavy patterned cotton fabric of Penelope’s upholstery, which presumably becomes radiant and alive in the light of the sun. However, it is a 19th century French term probably derived from Creton, a village in Normandy, that specialized in its mass production – another time and place from our ostensibly Aegean locale. This seemingly intentional incongruity complicates the search for identity, as if we should as readers be asking, “But is it Penelope?”
This sense deepens with the next lines, which echo Enesco’s epigraph on the essential exercise of the composer (meditation) remaining intact despite traveling and practice, due to a permanent dream:
She has composed, so long, a self with which to welcome him,
Her work and his traveling have not detracted her from composing a self implicitly distinct from her real self. This self exists to serve her dream of welcoming him, a dream which, in Enesco’s terms, is permanent. Outlines of this dream break uncertainly through with the rosy-fingered dawn:
Companion to his self for her, which she imagined,
“Companion to his self for her” can only sensibly be read as that her composed self would be the companion for his similarly fictionalized self. Both selves, the ambiguous “which” after the comma asserts, are products of her imagination. He is an actor and she is an actress, but the play runs on entirely in her mind, with:
Two in a deep-founded sheltering, friend and dear friend.
These are curious words to describe their “relationship” in light of the deprivation and longing Penelope suffered in Ulysses’ absence, and the perils and traps he escaped – particularly of the female variety – to get back to her. That the trials each experienced in the obsessive devotion to reunion would only result in friendship and a need for shelter from more trials is a lesson only implied in the Odyssey, that the journey is all. There is no fire, no love, no heroism, no noble suffering, no art, without the continual grief of separation. Severely deferred gratification, however, leads only to the stasis of contentment, what the present poem intellectualizes as a “deep” foundation and “dear” friendship. But why would Penelope, in control of her dream, desire in such passionless and unfruitful terms? Her pining for her husband’s return becomes a longing for a kind of death.
At this point Enesco’s violin returns, modulating the time signature of his dramatic theme to past tense:
The trees had been mended, as an essential exercise
In an inhuman meditation, larger than her own.
The agency that mended is left hopelessly obscure, at least to Penelope. She equates it with Enesco’s practicing – and his meditation – but it is “inhuman,” even though it connotes a human fix and seems an extension of what the reader knows is the actual Ulysses' handiwork behind the scenes. Further, it is “essential” and “larger than her own,” indicating that these inexplicable processes – having already occured – should be a model for her own meditations.
No winds like dogs watched over her at night.
Here, positive and negative aspects of dogs are transposed into one rather unruly metaphor. The disturbing wind-like howl of dogs at night – which upsets order, and may remind Penelope of the uncertainty and fears attendant on her long wait for her husband – contrasts with the way they protect her in her sanctuary of domesticity. Penelope, for reasons left unclear, denies either possibility. Perhaps she's unaware that the dogs have already recognized Ulysses?
She wanted nothing he could not bring her by coming alone.
The strange syntax continues. Canceling out the double negative, it seems to mean she wanted him alone, without gifts or baggage. But the line could also play in a more vaporous realm, suggesting that she, in fact, wanted nothing, which he, by coming alone, that is, without nothing, couldn’t provide. His actual self, in other words, was too much. There is the additional connotation that nothing only comes with others, not with him alone. The actual self cannot thus be canceled out by others but remains as an unbalanced equation.
She wanted no fetchings.
With a characteristic archaism, Stevens employs a rich descriptor of what Penelope didn’t want: something procured, something conveyed, a minder, escort, commander – all of which seem to her tawdry, not real. She was holding out for nothing, a notch better than the lowliest something.
His arms would be her necklace
And her belt, the final fortune of their desire.
Again, a literal reading co-exists with a literary reading. He would wrap himself around her neck as the only possession she needed, and her belt, the last material thing in the way of their desire, would be the “final fortune,” her prize to him as well as to them together. Simultaneously, the intimacy has a far more abstract cast, of starry creatures of war that shine like jewels, bright belts that tell our fortunes -- the end of our searching is not in the embrace of another human, but in the unknowable vastness of the heavens.
To this point, the poem bears a lot of amorphous mysteries, resonances and implications, nothing really cohering in the way that we – at least as traditional readers – would like. But it does carry an emotional weight, something longed for and not within reach, with the implication that perhaps its value is in not being graspable.
Still, nothing prepares one for the pathos of the next line:
But was it Ulysses?
As if with a sudden shudder, Ulysses appears in all his physicality. What had been surmised and outlined – and found wanting – just appears as a mirror image to the question.
It reminds me of the opening paragraph from Franz Kafka’s The Castle:
It was late in the evening when K. arrived. The village was deep in snow. The castle hill was hidden, veiled in mist and darkness, nor was there even a glimmer of light to show that a castle was there. On the wooden bridge leading from the main road to the village K. stood for a long time gazing into the illusory emptiness above him.
There is no objective reality. The choice is really up to the observer whether something is real or not. It’s a point we often miss. Ulysses could have been there the whole time, as was suggested by the trees, washing and mending. His being was independent of Penelope's perception, and how she qualified him away. Her realization that she may have thus done him an injustice brings him, if not into the open, at least out of her reach. For her conscience was pricked by the awareness of another soul, one whom she had arrogantly dreamed.
Or was it only the warmth of the sun
On her pillow? The thought kept beating in her like her heart.
Penelope seeks, as all people ensconced in duality do, to justify herself as an innocent rather than as a villain. How nice if all her imaginings were simply prompted by the warmth of the sun on her proximate pillow. What a sensible explanation! “The thought kept beating in her like her heart” because she knew she could equally be faced with a very real Ulysses in front of her who she could not meet in any defensible way.
The two kept beating together. It was only day.
In the balancing of the two thoughts – the veritable angel and devil on the shoulders – the two lovers actually meet as one. It is not what is said or even experienced that matters to lovers, but the space that is made for the other. With her question, her conscious openness to a reality besides her own, Penelope lets Ulysses into her heart in a way she hadn’t before.
This is followed by a seemingly important but unrelated phrase that has puzzled many commentators, “It was only day.” Is this a recognition of the overriding control of nature in the form of the sun passing through the day, or a confirmation that this is only Penelope’s daydream? I don’t view it in either of those terms, exactly. I read it as her exclamation of happiness that, indeed, it is only the sun on her pillow – aka the explanation that makes her look good. She can make this claim honestly because she has now felt Ulysses in her heart. And she is comfortable both having him and not having him:
It was Ulysses and it was not. Yet they had met,
The fact of their meeting – in the flesh – countered both the real and the imagined Ulysses. Which one was preferable is ambiguous, of course, but the feeling’s that the real one doesn’t measure up.
Friend and dear friend and a planet’s encouragement.
Penelope has reverted back to the composed version of their relationship, as if it is something for a storybook. It’s even blessed by nature (“a planet’s encouragement”), which gives it an even more abstracted feel, as if their coupling was compelled by outside forces.
The barbarous strength within her would never fail.
As she realizes the real and illusory can live safely inside of her, she feels confident she can subsume Ulysses, and indeed the world, with her mind (“the world as meditation”). The savageness of the sun from the opening stanza, which could also have referred to her, now explicitly includes her. And it includes Ulysses too. She resolved the uncertainties that plagued her. Her and Ulysses have been joined, perpetually.
She would talk a little to herself as she combed her hair,
Repeating his name with its patient syllables,
Instead of talking to him, she talks, or “would talk”, to herself. As if responding to him, she repeats his name. The syllables are “patient,” Latin for suffering. The clear implication here is that the two of them are having a real conversation, but a highly self-involved one. Her concerns are for herself and end with herself, while his need is to be amplified or validated by her, a process that amounts to nothing more than repeating his name. But, because he is patient with her, she is willing to weave and unweave her life for him (“syllable” comes from the Greek sullabē, take together – as in the good and the bad). That’s what love, marital love, is.
Never forgetting him that kept coming constantly so near.
Like clockwork, the bottom drops out of the poem with its heartbreaking final line. The real Ulysses who appeared in the absence she created for him cannot possibly compete with the idealized one. There will always be that primary place in her imagination for the Ulysses before Ulysses appeared. But because that Ulysses has been supplanted by the actual one, the one she loves has become wholly imagined but unimaginable, like an archon formed in the shadow of the light that grows ever larger, ever blacker and more distinct. This is what obsesses her in her meditation.
As C.P Cavafy wrote in his famous poem Ithaka:
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
(Edward Keeley translation)
So it is with Penelope, trapped with the byproduct of her desire, so that she is caught in a labyrinth of a permanent dream that shows, as in Stevens' "The Snow Man" poem, “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”
